The diabetes drug semaglutide, also known as Ozempic, has a positive effect on patients with chronic kidney disease and obesity. The amount of protein in their urine decreased, as did the degree of inflammation of their kidneys and their blood pressure. This was shown in an international study led by clinical pharmacologist Hiddo L.
Heerspink of the University Medical Center Groningen in the Netherlands. This is the first time that it has been shown that this diabetes drug , now best known as a means of losing weight, is also effective for patients with chronic kidney damage. The results of this study have been published in Nature Medicine and presented simultaneously at the annual congress of the American Society of Nephrology.
Hiddo L. Heerspink got the idea for this study at the beginning of the corona pandemic. Earlier, he had discovered that another class of drugs against type 2 diabetes , the so-called SGLT2 inhibitors, also appeared to work well for patients with chronic kidney damage without diabetes.
He therefore wanted to investigate whether semaglutide would also work positively for patients with chronic kidney disease and obesity. The first participants started this study in the second half of 2022. At that time, it had become increasingly known that semaglutide caused weight loss .
As a result, getting participants excited about this study was no problem at all. A lot of patients wanted the drug but could no longer get it because production could not keep up with.